


more than just a little curious how you're planning to go about making your amends (to the dead)

by tfm



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-06
Updated: 2019-09-06
Packaged: 2020-10-11 06:47:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20541842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tfm/pseuds/tfm
Summary: Post Episode 77.After hearing the contents of Jester's scry, Beau lashes out.





	more than just a little curious how you're planning to go about making your amends (to the dead)

Beau couldn’t move.

Could barely even breathe. There were people talking around her, but the voices were muted, and blurred.

‘Yasha was crying,’ Jester said, and her words were the only thing that Beau could focus on. Her world had narrowed entirely to hearing the things that Jester had seen, the things that Yasha had done.

‘You said there was blood all over the place?’ Beau tried not to let her voice shake, but she could feel the waver even as she clamped down on it.

‘There were dead bodies all over the place,’ Jester replied, in a hushed sort of voice. Beau felt nausea rising in her stomach. They would be bodies, she was sure, of people that she knew. People that she liked.

‘Well,’ Caleb was saying. His voice seemed so far away. ‘We do not know where she is going. There is nothing we can do about it right now. We continue as planned. See your mother, arrange travel, head into the Empire.’

‘Quickly,’ Jester said.

‘Quickly,’ Beau agreed, in a voice so soft she herself wasn’t even sure she’d said it out loud.

‘Horses, no carts.’

Beau found herself standing. Her feet automatically carried her to the door. ‘I—’ she started, but didn’t know how she was going to finish the sentence. She shrugged.

They would figure it out.

She left the room, ignoring the voices that called out after her.

One of them must have said something, because none of the Mighty Nein followed Beau downstairs, followed her out of the _Lavish Chateau_, followed her through Nicodranas and onto the beach. She wasn’t even sure where she was going, until she reached the white sand that was cold in the morning air. In a few hours, the sun would have heated it up enough that you’d burn the soles of your feet if you tried to walk on it.

Beau took off her boots, and tucked them into her belt, alongside the goggles, and her sash. Her cobalt blue sash.

At this time of morning, there was no-one else around.

The last time she was here was not that long ago, in the grand scheme of things. The last time she was in Zadash...

Though it was less than a year ago, it felt like so much longer. She felt so much older. It almost felt like the life of another person, of a person that hadn’t gone deep into Xhorhas, and barely survived coming out of the King’s Cage. That person...well, that person wasn’t exactly naive or childlike - they’d already dealt with Molly’s death by that point – but things they’d encountered over the last few weeks seemed bigger, more powerful, more horrifying.

Beau hopped from rock to rock, finally landing on the one she had meditated on so many months ago. It was entirely unchanged from the last time she had seen it. The entire world had moved on in so many ways, but this rock, this beach...there might as well have been nothing happening in the outside world.

She settled into a cross-legged position, and looked out across the sea. If she squinted, she could almost see a storm starting to brew on the horizon.

Perfect. There was someone she needed to have a talk with. A certain Stormlord sort of someone.

Like, _why the fuck are you letting the person that so devoutly worships you suffer at the hands of a fiend?_

Or,_ why won’t you help us save her?_

The second one, Beau thought she might have had an answer for: because they hadn’t exactly troubled themselves going after Yasha. They had fucked off looking for mythril, instead of caring enough to go after her.

For a few minutes, Beau continued to stare, thoughts rising and falling with the flow of the tide. Eventually, though, she heard footsteps coming up behind her.

There wasn’t anyone she particularly wanted to talk to, except maybe Yasha, but that, of course was impossible.

_It’s okay_, she would say. _It wasn’t you._

Or maybe, one day, she would have to say, _I forgive you_, even though there was nothing to forgive.

‘Hey there, first mate.’ Beau didn’t recognize the voice at first, as though she’d half forgotten all the bullshit they’d gone through to get to this point. The words, and the flash of green, and the memory of that morning in the forge brought it all back.

‘Hey, Fjord.’ Beau didn’t turn to look at him. She didn’t particularly want him to see the tears that were starting to well in the corner of her eyes.

‘If you want to talk,’ he said, and left it open for her to take where she needed to. Beau didn’t respond for a long time, watching as the dark clouds in the distance grew ever darker.

_How could you ever let anything happen to her?_

‘You were fine, you know,’ she said, after a very long silence, apropos of nothing except the dozens of thoughts that were running through her head. ‘When you didn’t have any powers. You weren’t useless.’

‘I...felt useless,’ he said, but he still sounded a little unsure of his words. ‘I had grown so accustomed to having those powers, that to not have them made me feel...weak.’

‘Do you think _I’m_ weak?’ Beau asked, pointedly.

‘Of course not.’ Fjord’s response was hurried and immediate. ‘I’ve seen you punch ghosts, and backflip over wolves, and sprint up the sides of enormous ancient trees. That’s not weak.’

Beau gave a slight scoff. ‘You think I’ve always been able to do that?’ She didn’t move her eyes, but she could tell that he was frowning. Still, he didn’t say anything. ‘I wasn’t able to do any of that sort of shit until I’d been with the Cobalt Soul for a while. The first few weeks I was there, I couldn’t punch my way out of a paper bag. But they trained me, and taught me, and for the first time in my life, I was being told that I _could_ do something, rather than couldn’t, and I put my heart and my soul into getting better.’ She paused. ‘Everyone I ever met at that place could be dead now, Fjord. Cut the fuck in half by a person we let get away. But hey, enjoy the new muscles the Wildmother gave you that you didn’t have to work for.’ Beau could feel the bitterness that she, to this point, hadn’t dared mention, come out all at once, without her permission.

For all his charisma, Fjord didn’t quite seem to know what to say to that, so Beau continued, letting out all the shit she really wanted to be yelling at herself.

‘We spent a whole fucking day in Bazzoxan trying to warn people about this guy, and then what? We thought he’d just stay away from anywhere that might have had innocents nearby? We were fucking around playing chicken with godsdamned dragons, when she should have just..._gone_ after her.’ A pause. ‘Gone after them.’

‘What would we have done?’ Fjord had apparently found his voice. ‘Even with Yasha, the Laughing Hand nearly killed all of us. The two of them fighting together...we would have all died.’

Now, looking back, Beau could see all sorts of options that they hadn’t even considered. ‘We could have followed them, we could have made sure they didn’t go anywhere near a fucking city full of innocent people, but instead we had to go find you a magic sword.’

That was completely unfair to Fjord, Beau knew. He hadn’t even been the one that was driving their mission to get the sword reforged, but he was sitting next to her, and seemed like a valid target for her to lash out at. He seemed to realize that, because he didn’t argue, didn’t fight back, just..._took_ the shit she was throwing at him. The same shit she would have thrown at anyone that would have come after her, to comfort her.

Before Beau even realized it, she was crying, her whole body heaving with sobs. Fjord put a warm hand on her shoulder. It was ridiculous. There weren’t any people at the Cobalt Soul she wouldn’t gone so far as to call friends, except for Dairon, but there were enough that she liked, enough that she respected that...

_Fuck_.

She was going to have to tell _Dairon_.

Or, more realistically, Jester was going to have to tell Dairon, but Beau wanted to make sure she was the one that wrote that message, because it wasn’t exactly the sort of thing that you entrusted to Jester’s...chaotic imagination. It was bad enough that she couldn’t tell Dairon in person.

Instead of letting _that_ thought fester in her head, Beau changed the subject.

‘Do you _really_ think that she turned against us?’ Beau asked. ‘That she’s doing all of this of her own free will?’

‘I...I don’t know.’ Fjord sounded less sure than he had the day after they’d left the King’s Cage, the day after _it_ had happened.

‘If she was crying,’ Beau said, slowly. ‘Then she was in there, couldn’t do anything to stop herself from doing what she did.’

‘You don’t know that.’ Beau ignored him. Whether he still mistrusted Yasha, or he was trying to assuage his own guilt for mistrusting, Beau didn’t know, and, honestly, didn’t particularly care. She had to believe that Yasha – _their_ Yasha – was still in there, was fighting against whatever evil had clouded her mind. Then, Beau voiced a thought she hadn’t even realized was going through her head.

‘I’m gonna have to buy new clothes.’

‘What?’ The confusion was palpable in Fjord’s voice, and Beau didn’t blame him. After all, even her own reasoning was a little shaky.

‘It’s just...if she comes back, and I’m wearing blue, then there might be...you know, bad memories.’ It was a stupid thought. It wasn’t as though Beau was even dressed the same as the Cobalt Soul monks anymore. She was wearing the new threads she’d picked up in Xhorhas, along with Molly’s belt. Come to think of it, Yasha would probably be more upset about the belt.

Fjord paused. Instead of telling her she was being ridiculous, he said, ‘Perhaps we can find something on the way to Zadash.’

‘Yeah,’ Beau said. ‘Zadash.’ She had been all for going to Zadash even just an hour ago, but now...now knowing that the Cobalt Soul might well be all but destroyed, she felt a sickening feeling at the thought of what they were going to find there.

But they had to go.

Beau stood (a little shakily), and gripped Fjord’s arm against her shoulder. She didn’t need his help to stand, but it was kind of nice to have the support anyway.

She paused. ‘Sorry for laying all that shit on you,’ she told him, perhaps a little embarrassed about the outburst that she’d had. ‘You...you didn’t deserve that.’

‘It’s quite alright,’ Fjord said, in that soft new voice of his. It still sounded weird. ‘Even now, I still feel a little unworthy.’ Well now she just felt like a dick.

‘Plus, you know, I’m glad you’ve got your powers back and everything.’ Beau was aware that she was giving a sub-par apology, and she kind of wanted Fjord to call her out on it. He didn’t.

‘You know, I’m sure if you wanted to have a chat with the Wildmother, she wouldn’t say no.’

Beau laughed. ‘Come on, man. Can you really see me as a denizen of the Wildmother?’

‘No,’ he admitted. ‘But there are other Gods out there.’ Beau brushed the thought away. It wasn’t even about wanting the power, it was more about...wanting someone to care enough to ask. In any case, there wasn’t a single God out there that would want much to do with a fuck-up like her.

‘Nah,’ she said. ‘No God would want me.’ Fjord frowned, looking a little unsure.

‘You sell yourself short,’ was all he said, and Beau was relieved he wasn’t about to start getting mushy about the whole thing. Her day had been bad enough already.

‘So.’ Beau steeled herself. ‘Let’s go get that transport sorted, huh?’

She took one last look out across the ocean.

Lightning split the sky.


End file.
